The Ascent of the SoulBradford, Amory H. (Amory Howe)
Religion
The Ascent of the Soul
Bradford, Amory H. (Amory Howe)
Ascension of the soul; Soul
What is the difference between the awakening of the soul and its
re-awakening? Are they two experiences? or different phases of the same
experience? The awakening is nearly simultaneous with the dawn of
consciousness. It is the adjustment of the soul to its environment--the
realization of its self-consciousness as free, as in a moral order, and
as possessing mysterious affinities with truth and right. This
realization is followed by a period of growth, during which many
hindrances are overcome, and in which the ministries of environment,
both kindly and austere, help to free it from its limitations and to
promote its advance along the spiritual pathway. But while the soul
dimly hears voices from above it has not yet, altogether, escaped from
the influence of animalism. It dwells in a body whose desires clamor to
be gratified. It is like a bird trying to rise into the air when it has
not yet acquired the use of its wings. Malign influences are still about
it, and earthly attractions are ever drawing it downward. It falls many
times. I do not mean that it is compelled to fall, but that, as a matter
of fact, its lapses are frequent and discouraging. In the midst of this
painful movement upward, there sometime comes to the soul a realization
of a presence of which it has scarcely dreamed before. It begins to
understand that it is never alone, that its struggle is never hopeless
because God and the universe, equally with itself, are concerned for its
progress. It is humiliated by its failures, but it has learned that,
however many times it may fail and however bitter its disappointment, in
the end it must be victorious because neither principalities nor powers,
neither things on the earth nor beyond the earth, can forever resist
God. Thus hope is born, and he who one moment cries, Who shall deliver
from this body of death? the next moment with exultation exclaims, I
thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
The light which shines into the soul from Jesus Christ is the revelation
of the cooeperation of the Deity, and of the forces of the universe, with
every man who is moving upward. The realization that, however deep the
darkness, humiliating the moral failure, constant and imperious the
solicitations of animalism, "the nature of things" and the everlasting
love are on the side of the soul is its re-awakening.
It now not only knows that it is free, in a moral order, and that voices
from a far-off goal are calling it, but also that those who are with it
are more than those who can be against it. Thus hope, confidence, power
to resist, and faith even in the midst of failure dawn, and will never
be permanently eclipsed. The re-awakening of the soul is now complete.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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